lence, though it may be obtained without the advantage of early training, has never been obtained without industry and perseverance and much practice. Those who think that writing well or speaking well is a kind of gift, as they call it, which comes of Nature's bounty, confound writing or speaking well with writing or speaking much, which, for aught we know, may come of Nature's bounteous profusion, just as she scatters weeds and briers with most profusion where the hand of the industrious cultivator is wanting.

The study of language seems to belong especially to the season of youth, when the mind is daily strengthening its powers and receiving from the infinite variety of things and the words which are associated with them, the imprint which may remain to the latest days of existence.

It is not here intended to be said that just notions of language cannot be acquired by the study of the mother tongue only, or that language cannot be learned by the study of a modern language: but as to learning language by the study of the mother tongue only, there are many difficulties; and, as to learning it by the study of a modern language, there are also difficulties which do not apply to the study of the classical languages.

The mat

The Latin and Greek languages contain a sufficient number of books to enable us, with the aid of the interpretation derived from tradition, to ascertain the meaning of their writers with sufficient exactness. ters which the best of these writers treat of are those which concern all mankind; they mainly relate to what affects the social existence of a community. The number of these writers is large enough to furnish us with sufficient materials for our study, and not so large as to bewilder us by the extent of the field to be traversed. Whatever is the meaning embodied in these writings, it is now fixed and unchangeable. The political existence of the nations has long since ceased, and their language and literature will always remain what they now are. It is not necessary for our argument to contend, that the best specimens of literary composition in the Greek or Latin language are superior to the best of modern times:

it is enough that they are of undoubted excellence, and that their value can never be affected, as that of the best specimens of any existing literature may be, by the lapse of time, and the changes which it brings with it. In studying the languages of the Greeks and Romans, we study both their meaning and their expression: their meaning, as an intellectual exercise that will always remain the same in kind for every age and every nation; their expression, for the purpose of forming and correcting our taste by something which all nations appeal to as a universally acknowledged standard and measure, if not of perfection, at least of excellence.

Our relationship to the monuments of Greek and Roman civilization, must not be measured by the advantages which we may derive from them, merely as instruments for our mental improvement. It would, indeed, require many words to exhibit in its completeness that which we can only indicate. The history of our own social existence, and that of Europe and its colonies, is only the history of the further developement of that which we read of in the extant monuments of the Greek and Roman nations. To them, as to a source, we trace the wide-flowing and ever-swelling stream, in which the civilization of modern Europe is now spreading over the globe. Other nations have their sources to which they must trace the historical origin of their social existence; that of the Hindus or the Chinese, is not ours. The light of history, which penetrates to the origin of our race and the beginning of society, fails us when we come to trace the steps by which the various nations of the earth assumed that form under which they emerge from the darkness of unrecorded ages; and the primitive relationship of all the children of men, becomes, by the lapse of years, confused and indistinct. Thus in the great mass of our actual society, the descendants of children who are sprung from common parents, in a few generations are strangers to one another. We cannot, therefore, show how all the various social systems into which mankind are distributed are related to one another, because there is no uninterrupted historic record of human society. But though we cannot show this, we can show and we

know, that our social life is a link in that long chain which binds together all the nations of Europe and their colonies, and reaches backwards to the cradle of our arts and sciences, to the earliest memorials of the nations of Greece, and the founders of the greatness of Rome: a study of their monuments is a study of our own history. The books in the Greek and Latin languages, which form the materials for the instruction of our youth in language, are a small number selected out of many. They are chiefly books which describe political events or exhibit the public life of the Greek and Roman nations; or books, such as the different species of poetry which represent them to us in their more inward and moral character, or such as contain their philosophical speculations and systems. The matter then which they treat of, though characteristic of a particular period in the history of the world and of a particular stage in civilization, is matter of that kind which most directly concerns our most immediate social wants and interests, and can never become either unintelligible or uninstructive, since the social man of to-day is in all essentials the same as the man of two thousand years ago.

This is the matter, expressed in language, on which the student of the classical languages is employed. We shall now show how he is employed upon it. For this purpose it will not be necessary to describe the elementary instruction by which he acquires a certain facility in these languages, though much might be said on this part of the subject with reference to old and new methods of teaching, both in the way of commendation and censure. We suppose a certain facility acquired, such as a boy of twelve or fourteen years of age may possess. The matter expressed in language, which is laid before the youth, may be a portion of a Greek or Roman historian-a portion of Herodotus or Thucydides, of Livy or Tacitus. It will comprehend many words or terms, which, from their universality and permanency, can never become doubtful in meaning; as, man, horse, mountain, river. It will comprehend others, which, though no less universal, are subject to modifications in every country; as, house, temple, chariot, ship; and which cannot, there

fore, be fully understood without knowing wherein the things signified by the terms differ from the things known by our own experience, and corresponding to and equivalent to the things denoted by such terms. It will also comprehend many terms which though of universal use in all countries to express certain notions, yet are distinguished in all countries by certain peculiarities, which in effect constitute the great distinctions between the different forms under which social life exists; as, husband, wife, parent, child, master, slave, guardian, ward. The terms "parent" and "child," for instance, present to the mind or suggest a relation between persons, which relation as to some things implied by the terms possesses the character of being universally intelligible, but as to other things has a particular force and meaning in each particular country. Akin to words of this class, but still more technical and positive in their meanings, are all those words which enter largely into works that treat of the public life of a nation, and express the various modes in which sovereign power is held, distributed, delegated, and exercised, the various rights and duties of the citizens, the terms by which are expressed their rights to property, and their mode of defending it from invasion; in a word, the terms of government, law, and administration. will also comprehend that large class of words by which nations express their judgments of things as they affect the sense of the beautiful, or what may be called æsthetical judgments; the words by which they express their critical judgments of the faculties of the human understanding; and those by which they express their judgments of human conduct, in which is embodied the positive morality of a nation.

It

In order then to comprehend fully the Greek or Roman historians, the student must endeavour to ascertain the exact meaning of all the terms used by them. He must learn to understand the things spoken of; that is, to conceive them as they were conceived by the writers. He, must do this partly by the help of the instructor, partly by consulting the best books of reference, and partly by comparing the various passages in which the same term has been used by the same or by other clas

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sical writers. The labour of such research is often great; the difficulty of the analysis, which it sometimes requires, may often prove more than a student can surmount; and after all, in some cases, complete success may not be attainable by the most accomplished critic: but in the labour of the inquiry consists more of the profit than in the success of the research.

It does not appear, so far as we can see, that there is any other exercise for youth, except that of learning a language other than his own, which gives him the same occupation as this. Those who know no language but their own are seldom practised, when young, in the task of ascertaining the precise meaning of many of those general terms which they must daily use, and the precise meaning of which it is often most important to know. With increasing years, as the active business of life comes upon a man, he is often driven to the consideration of such terms, and he must then endeavour to ascertain their meaning as well as he can. It is hardly necessary to remark on the utter inability of a large number of persons, who are by no means deficient in natural abilities, but have had no sound instruction in their youth, to give to others, or even to form for themselves, any clear notion of what is really meant by many of those general terms which are daily in their mouths,-the watchwords of political parties, the ensigns of religious sects, the signals of strife and hatred, the fruitful source of error and unhappiness. The only other way in which a youth could be practised at an early age in this kind of analysis, would be by introducing him to those several branches of study to which such terms severally belong; a kind of education manifestly impracticable, because the teacher generally would not be competent to it; and as manifestly useless for the pupil, because he would be incapable of profiting by it. Nor would it be any substitute for these studies to introduce him, as is the fashion in some places, to a course of mental philosophy,―understanding by the term, as we do here, a study of the powers of the human mind. Such a study, though proper for the teacher as a means of enabling him to direct the pupil, is not proper for the pupil till his mind has been disciplined and strengthened by previous studies.